Quincy police: Loose vets records fell off truck

Thursday

May 8, 2014 at 3:40 PMMay 8, 2014 at 5:57 PM

Quincy police say the private veterans records found strewn across a city neighborhood two weeks ago got there when they fell off the back of a box truck that was supposed to bring them to a facility for shredding.

Patrick Ronan

Quincy police say the private veterans records found strewn across a city neighborhood two weeks ago got there when they fell off the back of a box truck that was supposed to bring them to a facility for shredding.

The truck belonged to Shred King of Quincy, and the driver took a detour from his delivery route in order to pick up his wife in Quincy Center, police said.

Police Det. Thomas Pepdjonovic said surveillance video recorded behind Quincy High School on April 22 shows an object fall from the back of a white box truck as it drove east past the intersection of Russell Park and Woodward Avenue. Moments later, numerous pieces of paper can be seen floating around the area, Pepdjonovic said.

The location where police saw the item fall of the truck is the same neighborhood where dozens of Quincy veteran records, some containing personal information about individuals including Social Security numbers and benefit claims, were found on the night of April 22 and morning of April 23.

“It seems that the veterans documents found in the Russell Park area accidentally fell from the Shred King truck while at the intersection of Russell Park & Woodward Ave. at approximately 3:51 p.m.,” the police report said.

Pepdjonovic said no criminal charges will be filed in relation to the incident.

Mayor Thomas Koch asked police to investigate how the veterans records got loose because no one could explain how it happened. On April 22, Shred King picked up about 85 boxes of old records from the veterans services’ offices at 24 High School Ave to be shredded at the company’s Holbrook branch.

At the time, Henry Bradley, the city’s acting director of veterans services, said he saw the Shred King box truck get safely locked up with the records inside and drive away. Brian Spillane, a manager for Shred King, also said he doubted the records could have fallen off the truck because there was no reason for the driver to be in the Russell Park area.

During his investigation, Pepdjonovic interviewed several witnesses and observed the surveillance footage from Quincy High School. Shred King’s driver told police that on the afternoon of April 22, after he had already picked up the veterans records, he drove down Russell Park toward Southern Artery as he circled the downtown area to find a parking spot to pick up his wife.

After picking up his wife near Coddington Street, the driver said he started to drive back to Holbrook when he hit a bump in the road and he noticed a lock on the back grate of the truck had dislodged and was open. He told police he could not secure the back grate so he put on his hazard lights and drove slowly back to Holbrook. He reported seeing no documents flying outside the truck.

Christopher Walker, a Koch spokesman, said many of the individuals named in the loose veterans documents, which dated back to the 1950s, are deceased. However, he has said the city was looking at each document and would contact any living veterans whose personal information may have been compromised.

The incident hit a nerve with some in Quincy considering it came a month after another public-records scandal in the city. On March 10, a reporter Monday, a reporter observed two public works department employees burning paper records in the DPW yard at 55 Sea St.

That night, Public Works Commissioner Daniel Raymondi told Koch’s office that the state authorized the burning of records, the records were between 15 and 20 years old, the DPW had put out a public request for bids to shred the documents; and the shredding would have cost $22,000.

The next day, Raymondi retracted those statements and said they were based on faulty information. He said his department didn’t have permission to burn the records, the records were from as recent as 2007 and the cost estimate for shredding was inaccurate.

Raymondi apologized, saying the illegal burning of 49 boxes of unneeded records was unintentional and was the result of miscommunication within his department. That same week, the state’s Public Records Division of the Secretary of State’s office retroactively authorized the destruction of the records that were burned.

Joseph Shea, the city clerk, has since said the city has never spent more than about $3,000 to shred city records, and that has included many more than 49 boxes.